Birthday

Yep, today was my birthday. Thank you all for your calls, cards, gifts, well wishes! No golf today because the golf pro is going on holidays. (He is, however, coming in for a group lesson tomorrow which I'm thinking of attending.) I spent the morning waiting around for 3 lots of people to show up for various things. Of course only one of the three showed up. It was the TV guys who came to figure out what's wrong with our TV. They took the poor thing away to have a look instead of tackling it here. I took a taxi to meet Jim for lunch. We just had a light lunch at a coffee place. Didn't sit outside today because it was raining...again! This is what the "lake" looks like outside the entrance to Jim's work when it rains. Doesn't take much rain to make it look like this either! I then went to do some errands. I went to a pet shop because I needed to get a new collar for Oci. They had some unusual, to me anyway, pets there. Such as a chinchilla. Look at those tiny feet and the front feet are equally as small. What a ball of fluff! Wonder how the cats would be with a chinchilla brother or sister? ;-) Also they had these really cute squirrels there. Wonder how the cats would be with a squirrel brother or sister? LOL We met up at a bar near Jim's office for some birthday drinks before dinner. We then went to one of the most amazing restaurants. It's at Le Meridien Mina Seyahi. (I think Mina Seyahi means marina.) The restaurant is called Retro and is the most adventurous eatery I've ever been to. Service was excellent and the food was great fun and extremely interesting to try. We had probably more free stuff than we had food that we paid for because they offer palate cleansers and little bites between courses. Plus we ordered the "chocolate molten" for dessert which is sort of a souffle. It takes a while and after we'd been waiting for some time Jim said he figured that the souffle musta fallen. I pish-poshed that...it's a French chef, after all. Of course, yep, it had fallen and they had to cook another! (The waiter said that they normally cook 2 in case one falls but the chef got a bit cocky!) So we had a free dessert while we were waiting. So, what do I mean by adventurous? Here's what we ordered: **Contemporary tomato and mozzarella salad--sounds boring but it was breaded mozzarella (super crispy bread crumb sort coating) deep fried, served with tomatoes done 4 ways, "candied" (which was really more like soft dried), sorbet, jam and as a really reduced sauce. I was instructed to combine all tastes with every bite to get the effect that the chef had planned for. Excellent dish! **Desiree potato soup, bitter chocolate whip, black peppered cacao potato chips, virtual black truffle cloud--this came out with the chocolate in the bottom of a glass bowl to which the waiter poured the soup which had come in a little jug. Then Jim stirred it all up. The potato chips were thin rectangles that you could dunk into the soup if you wanted. Also a fantastic dish though it sounded very weird to me. **Salmon tournedos, rhubarb spread, root vegetable "pot-au-feu", horseradish ravioli--This was salmon rolled up into a spiral and poached. It sat atop a really rich thick rhubarb reduction. The root vegetables were of the baby variety and came in some broth in a glass cup. Two raviolis filled with horseradish accompanied it. For this dish I really preferred each part separately, though I wasn't wild about the horseradish raviolis but only because fresh horseradish isn't my fave. The salmon was perfectly cooked and succulent. **"Poulet de Bresse" pan seared breast and confied legs, tomato essence, sauteed spinach, a hint of lemon, langoustine froth--this was the legs of a small bird cooked confit (in fat, which sounds nasty but really isn't, honest!). A langoustine is a prawn, by the way. Prawn broth and chicken sounds weird but this was an excellent tasty dish. **Bitter chocolate-lemon molten, caramelized black pepper, milk ice cream, sour vanilla pear compote, lemon oil--Lots of components, huh?! The pear compote wasn't really sour it was scrummy, though! Ooooh, and if you love rich chocolate desserts, wow! This one is definitely it. It looks innocent enough until you try to cut into it then melted chocolate gushes out down the sides and onto the plates. The black pepper was really very good in it. **Strawberry tart, vanilla balsamic, olive oil ice cream--This was our free dessert while we waited. The balsamic in the dish helped cut the ice cream which had the olive oil in it. Also a yummy interesting dish. Some of the other things that we got for freebies: pineapple sorbet (this was about the only normal dish of the night), a chorizo (sausage) and tomato soup served in a test tube!, chocolate soup and citrus soups served in plastic medicine dropper sort of things!, candied olives (I really didn't like those!), pop rock candy served in a little "glass" packets made of sugar. There were a lot of other things I can't recall now! They also do a set menu meal which looks like great value and I'm really looking forward to going back to have it. And this time I'll take pictures! Here's a selection of stuff that we didn't have but shows the interesting food (though most of you will probably think it all sounds horrible!): **Lemon foie gras, peanut butter, coffee dust (fyi-foie gras is usually goose liver) **Crispy pork belly and trotters dipped in mustard, red pepper "choucroute", sweet corn, local lobster lost in the middle (baha! Love that description!), ginger syrup **Turbot roasted and foie gras, date puree, red wine shallots and sea urchin foam **Halibut, poached in almond milk, macadamia nougatine, asparagus tagliatelle, smoked egg velvet, hint of vinegar **Pink veal chop, buckwheat pancake, unsweet orange-garlic jam, nutmeg green leaves, cafe latte reduction **Toffee fluff, fleur de sel (aka salt), burly (!) caramel, cardamom whip and passion fruit sorbet **Chocolate melt "fleur de cacao", burnt saffron, soil leaf (no idea WHAT that is!), pepper drop